Author
Topic: Million Point March - Old (Read 2825 times)

This old TG forum post was very important to me when I was trying to learn to be an advanced DK player. Important enough that I never forgot it and just searched and found it still exists on the new TG website. This was before watching videos of games was an option and thread posts was the only way for me to learn from other players. Have fun reading:

A special entry by Ross on 5-27-2008 ends up defining why 1.1M games are possible now.

Heres my technique and the way I have reached 15000 several times now. Its easy and I have not yet found a better way of maxing out the points from barrels.

While standing in the safe zone I indicated in the big ass post above it is easy to set up groupings of two sometimes several in a row. When you see a pause coming just climb down the ladder and jump the same grouping again or if the opportunity presets itself make the jump bigger by leading another barrel down the ladder.

A lot of the time you should be able to jump 300 jump 300 , now Donkey Kong pauses, so climb down and jump 300. 900 points in about 4 ticks of the timer. This is really a sweet spot it is a total gravy train[/b]

Now I'm not sure if that was the inception of grouping, because I believe some players (not on the forum) may have been using it before that time. Otherwise, that an important DK techinque....mabye make a plaque of it with the date

Since people were not commonly streaming at the time, it was unclear who was doing what at the time. This is almost certainly the first description of grouping though. Something we take for granted now, it's interesting to hear it described as a novelty.

Logged

World Record for most insults to Vincent and lowest 1 hour Q*bert score: 395985

I'm glad people still remember this old thread -- at the time, it was a lot of fun, and was an important outlet for me to share my DK thoughts. During the era of this thread there was little to no public information about DK point-pressing, which I saw as a gaping void in the immediate post-KoK climate of CAGing. Like many others, my reaction to 's, "Donkey Kong is the hardest game...", was an "I'll be the judge of that" attitude.

Looking back now, holy hell is my writing awful . I'm amazed anyone could follow my gibberish (I know, I know, my writing still needs a lot of work (parentheses )). It's also regrettable that so many of the links have rotted. I deleted nearly all the youtube videos I posted, as the techniques they presented eventually became either outdated or such common knowledge that videos featuring them were no longer practical. All the image links were tied to an old blog I no longer maintain, so they are gone too .

Still, however, the philosophy behind the thread remains with me. I don't support secretiveness in competitive gaming, and I'd rather help others achieve their goals than lord my own achievements over them. Furthermore, I don't believe any "hidden" performance should ever be classified as a legitimate world record -- if it's not public, or done in public, it ain't worth shit. And lastly, and most importantly, sharing video game strategies leads to an ultimate breaking of the game, which is what competitive video gaming should be all about.

In other words, it's not me against you, it's us against the machine. Go ahead and learn from the tactics of other players. Contribute by sharing tactics of your own, or improvements upon existing tactics. There are no real short-cuts to greatness. Those who believe that sharing of tactics is providing their opponents with a short-cut, aren't seeing the big picture, and very likely aren't playing the game at the highest level. Even now, with every nuance of DK explored, and details published for anyone and everyone to see, players know that without a HUGE amount of practice, they're going nowhere.

It took a village to max out DK. It's hard to imagine any one player would have pushed DK to the max without the support of the modern DK community. Fuck, without the DK community, could still be the champion, and I'm glad I did my part to stop that from happening.

Sometime around late 2009/early 2010 (I think), I reached maximum frustration with the internal politics of TG. I don't think there was any specific incident, just a culmination of my dissatisfaction with every "little" thing TG was doing horribly wrong at the time. I pmd several senior referees and asked that my one submitted score (917K DK) please be removed from the TG database, as I did not want my name to have any affiliation with what was clearly a misguided, if not corrupt, enterprise. I asked for permission to continue participating in the TG forums, for I cared about my fellow forum members, I just wanted no part in representing TG as a legitimate scoreboard because there was a clear and intentional separation of classes at TG during this time. Their response was to leave my score on their scoreboard and delete my forum account -- literally the exact opposite of what I had asked for.

This was a time at TG when PSP was a referee, and posts were regularly deleted. This was a time at TG where, despite public outcry, the DK "Must be played live in front of a senior referee" rule was still around. This was a time when many players on the forum were expressing their distaste for the current regime, and sharing improvement ideas which were universally ignored. There was zero communication between the players and the scoreboard that needed them to thrive. It was fucking awful, and it was the beginning of the end of TG.

I have registered for an account at the new TG, and I sincerely wish it the best. I do see some unfortunate signs that the past will be repeating itself, such as their incomprehensible goal to make the TG scoreboard as proprietary as possible F-F-F-F-FailFish, but I've become too indifferent to say anything, and it's also far too early to pass judgment.

I have registered for an account at the new TG, and I sincerely wish it the best. I do see some unfortunate signs that the past will be repeating itself, such as their incomprehensible goal to make the TG scoreboard as proprietary as possible F-F-F-F-FailFish

TG once had an "affiliate" tag for scores on their board, where they took in scores from other sources. Unfortunately they made some bad choices as to what scores they added, soured everybody on the idea, and deleted all the affiliate scores.

The truth though, is that something like that is literally their only chance at having relevant rankings. With all of the data from the Adler/Knucklez era apparently having been wiped, the situation is even more dire. Now TG is missing scores from TG itself! Their DK scoreboard is, and I'm very sad to say this, a joke now. The top rankings were pretty close to reality last year, since the Kong Off was propping up an incentive to submit big scores, but now all of those are gone and it's a total mess. Steve and Billy are 2nd and 3rd there again (or, uh, 6th and 7th, since the ranking numbers aren't even correct??)

DK is just one example. Overall, they desperately need to bring in SDA, Aurcade, MARP, even BotA scores for anyone to care about their rankings. But for some reason, many people (including, apparently, the new ownership) just don't get that aggregation from multiple sources is the only way to do this kind of thing right in 2014. (This, by the way, is why I am totally in favor of allowing RU scores to be incorporated here on the DKF scoreboard, and I get more and more in favor of it the more I think about it.)

The problem with incorporating affiliate scoreboards is every scoreboard has different dipswitch settings, different methods of verification, different rules, etc.

- Aurcade has all live scores

- BotA are all one hour live self-reported scores with difficulty settings usually ramped up.

- Does RU allow pauses?

- MARP is basically self-reported with peer-review

If you mix all these scores together, you get an even more meaningless scoreboard. BTW, I voted yes to allow RU on our scoreboard as we already mix platforms MAME/Arcade and boardsets DK, DDK, triple DK, 60-in-1, etc.

« Last Edit: May 15, 2014, 07:02:47 AM by hchien »

Logged

World Record for most insults to Vincent and lowest 1 hour Q*bert score: 395985

If you mix all these scores together, you get an even more meaningless scoreboard.

It's not "mixing", so much as it is "reporting" with cited sources.

So you don't include unreliable sources. You don't include scores that weren't performed at the specified setting. You simply say, "In accompaniment to the scores we've verified, here are some other scores you may find interesting..."

How does that make the scoreboard more meaningless? Because it's releasing authority?

I was more concerned about different settings/rules than the authenticity of the scores, although that is a secondary concern. I wouldn't object to scores performed under the same settings/rules being compiled from different sources.

For example, would you want to mix SDA speed run times (which allow glitches for the most part and begins the timer when player gains control) with TG speed run times (which don't allow glitches and begins the timer when you hit start)? That would be meaningless.

Logged

World Record for most insults to Vincent and lowest 1 hour Q*bert score: 395985